Forum rules
There are no such things as "stupid" questions. However if you think your question is a bit stupid, then this is the right place for you to post it. Please stick to easy to-the-point questions that you feel people can answer fast. For long and complicated questions prefer the other forums within the support section.Before you post please read how to get help

Just started using Mint 7 RC1 (coming from Ubuntu 8.x & 9.04). I would say that if I spent enough time to customize Ubuntu, it would looks like ... LinuxMint. So you guys saved me a lot of time. Thanks.

So far I got used to Ubuntu GUI, now that I see LinuxMint's look & feel, I wonder why Ubuntu couldn't do the same with a bigger team. However, in my opinion, there are good ideas in Ubuntu design. Part of it is the two panel system with the start menu in the top panel. Why is it better?

1. More room and clear separation: Menu, launchers, notification, Windows switcher on the top panel. Tasks on the bottom panel.

2. The bottom panel can be replaced by a dock (Avant Window Manager or Gnome Do). The top panel can still remains unchanged. This is something that the 1 panel design like LinuxMint cannot do.

In other words, I think that LinuxMint's taskbar looks too much like Windows XP's one. The "Start" menu itself is well done, but the mix of menu + tasks + launchers + notification in the same panel is not efficient. Was Mint's menu designed to take minimum room on the screen? If so it is not an advantage for me.

I have added another panels and pretty much put applets back to replicate Ubuntu's menu. There are are few things I could not do:

Q1. Right click on an application: there is no more "Add to Panel" or "Add to Desktop". Is there a way to have them back (other than "create launcher")?

Q2. "Places" menu that drop down the list of all home sub-folders and bookmarked folders. Mint's Home icon on the desktop is almost the samething. But it requires a double click, its icon is covers by opened applications. How to replicate Ubuntu's places menu?

mintMenu contains the Home place link, so no worries about the desktop link being hidden behind windows. I believe the mintMenu places customisation has been postponed for a future release, so it's obviously not as trivial as you think. They are however good feature suggestions, so I propose you repost them as suggestions in the mintMenu section of the forums.

If you have a question that has been answered and solved, then please edit your original post and put a [SOLVED] at the end of your subject headerHint - use a google search including the search term site:forums.linuxmint.com

Mint Xfce has a working "places" function, give the live cd a spin, you'll probably like it!When I first tried Xfce it was like seeing the light, it is faster then Gnome, and has better plugins for the panel,you can even run Gnome panel applets if you want to, so in that you can run both the minMenu AND have the "places" plugin(xfce and/or Gnome) going at the same time.

Right click on an application: there is no more "Add to Panel" or "Add to Desktop". Is there a way to have them back (other than "create launcher")?

You can left click and drag the shortcut to the panel.

Works perfectly, it's even better than the right-click "Add to ..." No wonder why the right click implementation was removed.

Zwopper wrote:Mint Xfce has a working "places" function, give the live cd a spin, you'll probably like it!When I first tried Xfce it was like seeing the light, it is faster then Gnome, and has better plugins for the panel,you can even run Gnome panel applets if you want to, so in that you can run both the minMenu AND have the "places" plugin(xfce and/or Gnome) going at the same time.

XFCE? Never tried. Is it the bare minimum graphic mode that Gnome reverted to when when Xorg.conf is corrupted? I will to give it a try running it in a VM. May be I would see the light too.

Eucalyptus wrote:XFCE? Never tried. Is it the bare minimum graphic mode that Gnome reverted to when when Xorg.conf is corrupted? I will to give it a try running it in a VM. May be I would see the light too.

Oh no, it is a nice DE, with it's own compositor and all, it's nice looking, full of goodies, and fast as lightning - should be the default DE IMHO; mind you I was a hard headed Gnome fanatic before I tried Xfce!